Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

It's all a bit meh as twerking thrusts its way into Oxford English Dictionary

Is Miley Cyrus’s favourite dance worth its place? Fo’ shizzle it is, the twitterati might say, as more than 500 new dictionary entries are revealed

Miley Cyrus twerking on stage at the 2013 MTV Music Awards. Photograph: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for MTV

What do the twitterati think about twerking? Is it still hot fo’ shizzle or is it just meh? If you would struggle to decipher that opening sentence, you can now consult the Oxford English Dictionary, which has included those four phrases in more than 500 new entries announced on Thursday.Twerking seems to be an unlikely contender for first time inclusion – for a word to qualify, it must have been have been in popular use for at least 10 years in novels and newspapers. The thrusting dance was popularised by the singer Miley Cyrus at a 2013 MTV awards show and, two years on, it already seems somewhat passé.But twerking, which the dictionary describes as dancing “in a sexually provocative manner, using thrusting movements of the bottom and hips while in a low, squatting stance”, is almost 200 years old.More